Cheerleaders boost school spirit

By Catherine Fahy

Saturday

Mar 1, 2014 at 2:00 AM

This year on the football field, the cheerleading team deserves a cheer just as much as the football team.

Along with a rare camaraderie that spans all members and contributes to a stronger team, the girls’ individual performances have earned them spots on the All-American Team. In May at the National Cheer Conference in North Carolina, co-captains Katy Manchester and Megan McLaughlin, along with juniors Hillary Polvere and Lauren Fry and sophomore Carolyn Priestley, were named to the All-American Team. Then, at a cheerleading camp on-island this summer, senior Elizabeth Gardner and freshman Rhowan Guistibelli were also chosen for the All-American Team. All seven girls are traveling to Florida next month to cheer at halftime in one of the college football bowl games.

Just as strong as the squad’s performance this year is their camaraderie, said Gardner, who’s been on the team since her freshman year. “I’ve never seen a team get along so well to this point,” she said.

What’s more, they have an equally good relationship with the football team, one that’s as far from the mythical stuff of movies as the notion that cheerleading isn’t a sport.

Photo by Nicole Harnishfeger The 18-member Nantucket High School cheerleading team qualified for the regional championships at the Mayflower League Championships earlier this month. The regionals were held in Franklin last weekend. “It’s a very strong bond that goes beyond dating,” said McLaughlin, unable to think of anyone on her team who’s dating a member of the football team. “We’ve grown up together, we travel together and we’re all just very good friends,” she said.

Proof of that is the pre-Vineyard game tradition of decorating the yards of the senior football players’ homes, which the cheerleaders do a few days before the game, and swapping uniforms with the senior players at Friday’s pep rally.

By all accounts, the Whalers are very supportive of the cheerleading team and, the girls said last week during an interview at The Inquirer and Mirror, more than a dozen players were planning to accompany them to the regional cheerleading competition in Taunton until their own game against Cape Cod Regional Technical High School was switched to Sunday because of weather.

The cheerleading team qualified for regionals earlier this month at the league championships in Franklin. The cheerleading team is part of the Lighthouse Conference but because there are so few cheerleading teams in that league they were included this year in the Mayflower League.

After being picked to perform first, the Nantucket team held its edge after 14 other teams had competed, and was one of half a dozen chosen to advance. Last week, coaches Karen Wheeler and Missy Perry said they were confident the Nantucket squad would advance from the regionals to the state finals.

Aside from knowing they qualified for the regionals, however, the team knows nothing other than the judges’ comments relayed to them by their coaches. “The score is not as important as the comments,” Perry said, listing spacing and formation as two areas the girls need to practice.

Last Friday after a particularly challenging routine in which two girls called “flys” did 360-degree turns while being held aloft by the other girls, called “bases,” Wheeler commented that the girls need to work on their timing. “It’s a very visual, artistic routine,” Wheeler said.

Because the 18-member Nantucket squad is relatively small, the girls need to be versatile, meaning they can be in the air or on the ground depending on the routine, something the crowd appreciates. “People will stop me to say how well these girls have been doing,” Wheeler said.

Perry said cheerleading has become more challenging in recent years, demanding both physical and mental strength and stamina. The Nantucket squad practices three days a week for three hours and cheers at halftime during every game. During the rest of the year, many girls do gymnastics and attend cheerleading camps on- and off-island to perfect their stunts, tumbles and cheers.

And, unlike other sports teams, the cheerleading team can miss a competition if just one of them is injured. “One injury can wipe you out,” said McLaughlin, who injured herself two days before a competition when she was a freshman. In a case like that, the ability to rework a routine depends on how much practice the team can fit in before the competition, the coaches said.

The girls’ dedication has become all the more noteworthy in recent years since the team was dropped from the high school athletic budget, forcing the cheerleaders to raise all of the money for uniforms and travel themselves if they wanted to continue. With the cost of a single uniform at close to $300, the girls have to do a considerable amount of fundraising.

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